Know Yourself to Know Others by Thich Nhat Hanh

Know Yourself First

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Suppose two warring parties want to negotiate, and both sides do not know enough about themselves. You have to really know yourself, your country, your party, your situation, in order to understand the other’s party, the other’s nation, the other’s people. Self and others are not two separate things because the suffering, hope, and anger of both sides are very much the same.You must know yourself in order to understand someone else. 

When we get angry, we suffer. If you really understand that, you also will be able to understand that when the other person is angry, it means that he/she is suffering. When someone insults you or behaves violently towards you, you have to be intelligent enough to see that the person suffers from his own violence and anger. But we tend to forget. We think that we are the only one that suffers, and the other person is our oppressor. This is enough to make anger arise and to strengthen our desire to punish. We want to punish the other person because we suffer. Then, we have anger in us; we have violence in us, just as they do.

When we see that our suffering and anger are no different from their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately. So understanding the other person is understanding you, and understanding yourself is understanding the other person. Everything must begin with you.

Care for Your Anger

To understand ourselves, we must learn and practice the way of non-duality. We should not fight our anger because anger is our self – a part of our self. Anger is of an organic nature, like love. We have to take good care of anger. And because it is an organic entity; an organic phenomenon, it is possible to transform it into another organic entity. The garbage can be transformed back into compost, into lettuce, and into a cucumber. So don’t despise your anger. Don’t fight your anger, and don’t suppress your anger. Learn the tender way of taking care of your anger, and transform it into the energy of understanding and compassion.